One Man's Notes on Movies and Other Life Obsessions by Chuck Wilson

March 01, 2017

Movie actors intend no less than to live forever, a goal that seems likely for the ever-likable, endlessly surprising Bill Paxton, who died last weekend at age 61 from complications following heart surgery. (Too damn soon.) No softie, Paxton created memorable movie villains, including the loves-his-work vampire in Near Dark (1988) — “It’s finger-lickin’ good!” — and a terrifying serial-killer father of two in the neglected gem Frailty (2001), which Paxton also directed. For all that, the Texas-born actor likely will be remembered as a perennial “good guy,” a phrase Paxton probably wouldn’t mind a bit, as long as we also acknowledge his artful gift for revealing the dark currents that ran beneath that infectious, unforgettable grin.

As tribute, try this potent double bill: One False Move (1992) and A Simple Plan (1998), two superb dramas that bear all the trappings of a crime thriller but gradually evolve into richly emotional character studies. Director Carl Franklin’s One False Move isn’t famous, but its mix of ferocity and grace marks it as a classic. Paxton is Dale “Hurricane” Dixon, the police chief of a dusty Arkansas town, who nearly busts with excitement when two FBI men show up to trap three killers — two men and a woman — making their way cross-country. Written by Tom Epperson and Billy Bob Thornton, who plays one of the killers, One False Move opens with the brutal drug-related murder of six and stays tough-minded throughout, but the tone shifts once Dale realizes that the wanted girl coming home to Star City, Arkansas, is Lila (Cynda Williams), with whom he once had an affair. One scene later, he realizes the little boy Lila’s mother is raising is his.

Something to notice: Paxton had a way of going completely still when his character learns new, world-altering information. In director Sam Raimi’s beautifully realized A Simple Plan, Paxton is Hank, a Minnesota feed-store clerk who decides to keep the $4 million he and his brother (Thornton again, and never better) found in a crashed plane in the woods. Relentlessly ordinary, with a wife (Bridget Fonda) and new baby, Hank is so obsessed with doing the right thing (for everyone) that he talks himself into committing murder, and not just once.

Next to the fundamentalist Mormon businessman he played on the HBO series Big Love, Hank was Paxton’s greatest role, and again, the performance’s power lies in those moments when circumstance stuns Hank into silence. People are forever revealing their secret selves to Hank — the good guy’s burden — and Paxton lets us see Hank strain beneath their emotional weight. In the end, Hank’s been wrong about everything, including that bag of money, and Raimi trusts that Paxton doesn’t need words to let us feel Hank’s psychic shock — we see it settling into his bones.

When I learned Paxton had died, I immediately thought of the finale of One False Move, which finds Dale, stabbed and shot, lying on the ground, his face turned to the side, away from the camera. His little boy has wandered over to him, and though wounded, Dale is determined to keep the child distracted from the bloodier carnage nearby. So, he keeps talking. Franklin never shows us Dale’s face in this scene, but he doesn’t have to. As an actor (and movie star), Paxton’s greatest asset may have been his voice, which was full to bursting with a generosity of feeling that made him the rarest of screen presences — a fully realized human.

February 16, 2017

I often post quotes from books and movies and I wonder if some people think that's weird. But I come from from book people, from book sellers, from readers; people who didn't think it odd if you stopped them in their tracks to read a good passage. (Reading aloud is selfish in a way, because more often than not, the reader is trying to ground himself, save himself, just get thru the day.) And I come from a circle of friends with whom I passed many an evening with little happening but pages turning; me on one end of the couch, he or she on the other. And often we'd read aloud. In those days (the 80s, 90s), we were "searching for clues," and books (and movies) were our guides. Our greatest reader was Karen Quist (KQ), who plowed thru at least 3 books a week, and who filled blank notebooks with quotes from novels. KQ loved mysteries, and worldly-wise, wise-cracking narrators. Karen lived in Long Beach and I lived in Hollywood, and we used to send each other postcards with our latest favorite quote written out. Pre-Internet, pre-emaill, when writing words on paper and sending it on the wind to a loved one was an intimate act. Cancer took Karen from us, but I still read aloud to her in my mind, and I still have her notebooks full of quotes, and I still ear-mark quotable pages, and sometimes I post them, for KQ, for my friends and fellow readers, and for myself. (Chuck Wilson)

January 24, 2017

Relieved FENCES did so well. Thrilled about August Wilson. Thrilled for Ruth Negga in LOVING, and sad but not surprised about Joel Edgerton, whose performance is a thing of beauty. LOVING is a future classic----the movie audiences have yet to discover, and will watch again and again thru the years. Should have been up for screenplay. Not surprised about Mel Gibson. He's a pig but he knows how to make a movie (and how to hire a great crew.) He stole it from LION's Garth Davis. (LION bored me silly after the first section; I thought it would never end.) (I don't love MANCHESTER much either, beyond Affleck's typically beautiful work.) Glad for Andrew Garfield. Bummed for Hugh Grant. Bummed for Adam Driver but blame A24's foolish Dec. 28 release date. No one saw it, plus the Academy doesn't understand that kind of performance. (Ya gotta have a gimmick.) Amy Adams? Well, maybe she's relieved. Six losses in a row would be brutal. (Like Leo, when she finally wins, it'll be for the wrong movie.) Annette Bening---I'm not a fan of "20th Century Women" (it's such a "movie") but she must be bummed. (She'll get an Honorary Oscar soon.) Sad for Taraji P. Henson. She deserves to win---that's a classic Academy performance. In another time, Kevin Costner would have been a lock. Not surprised about SILENCE or Scorsese though the Cinematography nod is nice. (The Cinematography branch does nice things, like the time they nominated SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS.) SILENCE is not a screener movie---they never finished it (if they even put it in the player). Nominating Viggo Mortensen for Actor is a lovely surprise---the sweet spot nom of the day. (His son in CAPTAIN FANTASTIC, George MacKay, IS that movie.) Wish they had found a spot for Krisha Fairchild, whose work in KRISHA, is staggering.

O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA is the best documentary ever made for television, but still....it's a TV show, kids, and always was. (It'll be fun to see if its genius PR team can pull off Emmy noms next September.)

Nine Best Picture nominees. Absurd. If you nominate everyone, how does it mean anything? When the Academy went up from five Beat Picture nominees, they ruined the brand. When you have to check an app to remember the Best Picture nominees---instead of ticking them off on your hand---meaning has been lost. (Chuck Wilson)

January 10, 2017

Near the end of Underworld, the 2003 film that launched the popular (and profitable) horror franchise, Viktor (Bill Nighy), king of the vampires, tries to kill the werewolf (aka Lycan) lover of his protégé, Selene (Kate Beckinsale), and she is not pleased. Grabbing a sword, Selene leaps straight up and over Viktor, gently swiping his face with the sword as she passes. Glaring at her, he then takes a battle stance, his own blades drawn, but suddenly, puzzlement fills his eyes. There is a pause, and then the diagonal sword slice across Viktor’s face fills with blood and half his head — eyes still looking puzzled — oozes to the ground.

Viktor’s wittily gory demise, as directed by Len Wiseman, never grows old, which is both wonderful and sad because it turns out to be the single memorable moment from a film series that’s been around for 14 long years. The fifth entry, Underworld: Blood Wars, produced by Wiseman and directed by newcomer Anna Foerster, has received brutal reviews (fangs out!), but it’s actually not the worst thing ever — that would be 2012’s Underworld: Awakening, which happens to be the only other film in this series that Wiseman didn’t direct. Coincidence?

This time out, Selene and her vampire cohort, David (Theo James), are trying to prevent Marius (Tobias Menzies), a power-mad Lycan leader, and Semira (Lara Pulver), an equally ambitious vampire diva, from getting their teeth into Selene’s long-lost daughter, whose vamp/wolf mixed blood is the prize of prizes.

Devoted Underworld fans (and they are legion) will find heaps of new vampire/Lycan lore to parse, and the action is nonstop, though wildly inconsistent. Forester doesn’t seem to know what to do with a castle jammed with angry wolves and vamps; she's much better with Selene’s intimate final showdown with Marius. That fight takes place atop a snowy Nordic mountain near the Northern Lights, and the possibility that the setting was inspired by the animated hit Frozen is the only interesting thing about this movie.

Beyond the sight of Beckinsale slaying her enemies while clad in a black latex bodysuit, the ongoing appeal of the Underworld series surely lies in its villains, vampire and werewolf alike, and the absurdly overqualified British actors who play them. Besides the great Nighy, Stephen Rea, Charles Dance, Derek Jacobi and — most memorably, in three films now — Michael Sheen have brought a wicked glee to a series whose heroine (no offense) is serious to a fault.

For Marius, the evil Lycan leader of the newest film, Forester has enlisted Tobias Menzies, whom she directed in several episodes of the cable series Outlander. Wildly talented, Menzies should be just the spark to bring Underworld back to life, but it doesn’t happen. Screenwriter Cory Goodman (The Last Witch Hunter) isolates Marius from Selene and the other major players so that Menzies is left adrift, like a great fighter without a worthy sparring partner.

This series is listing, badly, which raises the question: Should Beckinsale hang up that latex suit? Although she’s always given her all to Selene, the Underworld flicks have felt like a fallback for the actress, who was long overdue for a great role. Last year, she finally found it, as the delightfully conniving Lady Susan in the sublime Jane Austen comedy Love & Friendship. Beckinsale is a revelation, not least because Lady Susan is everything Selene can never be: fully and vividly alive.

FENCES, which is playing in LA & NY, and opens nationwide December 25th is the movie I love most this year. I cry when I see it, not for the turns of plot (there are some good ones), but for the LANGUAGE, which is theatrical and exalted and magnificent. August Wilson wrote plays in which people speak the way we all wish we could speak---passionately, furiously, wittily, and with the twirled tongue of an accidental poet. (Each of us is an accidental poet maybe once a year, or every other year, or just once a decade, and when we do say something worth writing down---that stops speaker and listener in their tracks--we know it, instantly, and wish we were that person----that poet---everyday, and always.) So, yes, go see the space movie, and see LA LA LAND, cause those are the ones you'll be asked about, but see FENCES as soon as possible. See it, but mostly (and it's okay to briefly shut you eyes during a movie), LISTEN to it. (Chuck Wilson)

November 17, 2016

Filmmaker Howard Brookner died in 1989, at age 34, leaving behind two brilliant documentaries and a world of people who loved him dearly. These include his nephew, Aaron Brookner, whose documentary about his uncle’s life is a bit disjointed but also vibrant and loving, much like its subject. Brookner is best known for Burroughs: The Movie (1983), which found the filmmaker trailing writer William Burroughs (“Naked Lunch”) for five years.

As Uncle Howard begins, Aaron discovers a treasure trove of raw footage that shows Howard interacting with (and charming) Burroughs and his iconic friends, among them, Allen Ginsberg and Andy Warhol. Great stuff, but for a good while, it feels as if we’re watching the Burroughs doc, not a film about its maker. Howard Brookner the man comes more sharply into focus when Aaron reaches out to his uncle’s former lover, poet-biographer Brad Gooch. When they first met, in NYC, circa 1978, each man noted the moment in his daily diary, and the years that follow are movingly recounted here by Gooch and their many friends.

his is a film rich with old home movies, including achingly sweet footage of a family party for a frail (but beaming) Howard, who was dying of AIDS. Aaron gives his uncle the last word, utilizing found footage that’s so perfect an exit it’s as if Howard planned for it to be used in exactly this way — and maybe he did.

November 11, 2016

In the deeply moving documentary Iron Moon, filmmakers Qin Xiaoyu and Wu Feiyue explore the language and lives of five of China's so-called "worker-poets," including Xu Lizhi, who jumped to his death at age 23 from the factory where they make iPhones.

The other artists profiled do equally numbing work in coal mines and assembly lines, and like Xu — and all true poets — have no choice but to set pen to paper. "I am the dusty factory wall, and the ivy that climbs it," writes Dawn Wu, 33, who spends her days sewing dresses in an airless factory; in another poem, she imagines one of the sundresses she's made being worn by a happy young Westerner: "Unknown girl. I love you."

What's surprising and quite lovely about Iron Moon is that the filmmakers, by accident or design, take us so deep inside the daily lives of their subjects that they end up offering a kind of visual tone poem to their nation. China has rarely seemed so stark, yet so beautiful, which may be the contradiction that drove Xu Lizhi to take his fatal leap, even as he left behind these words: "There is no need to sigh, or grieve. I was fine when I came, and I will be fine when I go."

November 08, 2016

Little devil. Heaven help me," declares Adan (Barkhad Abdirahman) as he stares down at the stray dog he can't quite shake. As this small gem opens, the 22-year-old Somali refugee, living in Minneapolis, gets kicked out by his mother, argues with his friends, and, suddenly homeless, finds refuge in his local mosque. The next day, he crosses paths with that darn dog (Ayla, a dazzling Jack Russell). By tradition, Muslims tend to be leery of dogs, and Adan is no different — he never quite touches his new companion, yet he's constantly placing her needs above his own.

Writer-director Musa Syeed has conjured a drama rich with incident — there's even a federal agent using Adan as a (quite useless) informant — but most of the turns of plot feel organic, ours to discover, as long as we're paying attention. So we suddenly learn, in the most casual way, what made Adan's mother so mad, and discover, offhandedly, that Adan has given the dog a name.

The Kenyan-born Abdirahman, who lives in Minneapolis himself and was one of the pirates in Captain Phillips, turns in a gorgeous performance. You won't catch him acting, but when Adan wanders into a Somali museum and runs his fingers through real dirt retrieved from his homeland, you'll likely feel its textures in your fingertips, too. And long after, you may recall Adan’s voice asking God, “Do I have to wait for Heaven to find a home? (Chuck Wilson)